The Postcode Diaries: Update
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The Seed
One of my best ideas for my wedding was to buy the Second Edition of Atlas Obscura, a modern world encyclopedia, to use as our guest book. The beauty of Atlas Obscura is that it lists unusual, weird, obscure (duh) places, rather than the pristine, photogenic, clichéd tourist hotspots. Rather than have people writing us well-wishes (which they already would have done in their cards to us), I asked guests to pick a country or location that they thought we should visit. If you ever get to visit us in person, you should ask to sign it, too!
A feature of this atlas is that it contains a pull-out map with an itinerary to travel the world in 80 days (though it has nothing to do with the 1872 French adventure novel). This map greatly appealed to the architect in me, as maps usually do. I started wondering: what if I could create a fictional diary visiting each of those 80 locations? Now that would be a fun art project! I stored the idea at the back of my mind, on the designated and overloaded “To Art Someday” shelf.
The “Pivot”
If you have read my blog before, you may remember that in April of 2020, back when we used to make plans for our lives, I had an art goal to restart my Postcode Diaries that same July. However, for us in Melbourne, things were looking bleak. Even though I had a handful of postcodes finished and ready to be released, it felt insensitive sharing content about local suburbs that could still be illegal for most of the state to visit. I did not want to seem like I was encouraging people to break the law, and neither did I want to give the impression that I was travelling around the state when I wasn’t. Sadly, I had to let go of that plan.
In my disappointment, I started thinking of other art projects I could do. Having recently completed The 100 Day Project, I was keen to maintain the habit and think of something that would be motivating enough for me to work on every day. I mentally walked over to my “To Art Someday” shelf and dusted off the 80 Days Around the World idea. But again, I was met with disappointment!! As I started listing the locations, I found that most of the 80 days were spent in only one country - the United States of America. It’s not that there aren’t beautifully fascinating sights to see, or that I wouldn’t want to visit again - it’s that I was surprised that a “world trip” would spend so much time in only one country when there are almost 200 countries in the world today.
Disappointed, yet again, and I hadn’t even started the project!
I decided to see if Atlas Obscura had a website and to see if they had more locations than they’d listed in their book. And boy, oh boy, they certainly do. There are thousands! With this new revelation, I decided instead to visit all the countries that our wedding guests had chosen for us. Immediately, the project became more than a fun idea, it now had an new layer of meaning, with a more sentimental connection and collaboration added to it. So, I opened up Excel and created a new list of countries - all the countries that our friends and family want us to visit, plus any others that I wanted!
The Merge
As I began thinking about how to execute the project, I found myself constantly referencing The Postcode Diaries. I referenced its design, its layout, the way I blogged about it, the art style. Soon I realised that I was actually just recreating The Postcode Diaries, but for the whole world! But how could I still call it Postcodes? Different countries have wildly different postcode systems - the perfectionist in me didn’t possess the flexibility or capacity to write a different format for each entry. I needed a system that was consistent.
I typed “country codes” into Google. The first thing that came up was telephone codes: close, but still inconsistent. Some countries have 2 numbers, some have 3. Nope. Next was an alphabet system: a simple, 3-letter coding system called the “ISO 3166-1 alpha-3”. It was perfect! Every country in the world simplified to 3 letters each, and internationally recognised. In fact, you all would have seen this system being used in any airport: on the display boards, on your ticket and in your passport. Jackpot!
Essentially, The Postcode Diaries and 2020 got together and gave birth to:
The Postcode Diaries: Passport Edition
^_^
The Journey
I won’t reveal how many I plan on doing because it’s a big and scary number. If you know my battle between creativity and anxiety, you’ll know that I suffer badly when I “fail” a project. I will tell you that it’s going to continue through 2021. Due to the massive feat of this project, I need to keep it as simple as possible, so that I don’t feel overwhelmed by it. I mention the benefit of constraints in this post. In order to help me make decisions more quickly, like where exactly to “visit”, I need to remember that this is still a personal project, not a commissioned piece - I’m allowed to do the things that I like and that I want to do, keeping it interesting for me, first and foremost. I will only be using Atlas Obscura to choose the locations. Because these locations are so obscure, there aren’t always photos or information readily available. Therefore, I am limiting myself to the following resources, for both image references and facts about the location:
Atlas Obscura (book and website for all location ideas)
Wikipedia (for quick stats such as weather, temperature, population)
I really am excited about this project! It’s bringing me joy and is satisfying the longing that I had to return to my Postcode Diaries. If you want to journey with me, the best ways are to follow @thepostcodediaries on Instagram for the art and subscribe to the blog via email notifications or RSS feed.